University staff suspend action

Academics have voted to suspend possible industrial action which could have threatened students' graduations this summer.

Delegates at the Association of University Teachers annual conference in Scarborough decided that the employers' new offer should be put to members in a four-week ballot.

The AUT had staged strikes and a marking boycott over a pay package which, the union feared, would force some academics to lose thousands of pounds of annual rises in transferring to a new national salary scale.

University College London previously warned that summer exams might have to be cancelled if the AUT continued the boycott.

If accepted by members, the new offer would produce significant additional pay increases, targeted initially at those at the lower end of the pay scales, the AUT said.

It would also reverse all the losses in career earnings that would have occurred under the old offer from the Universities and Colleges Employers Association.

During the conference debate, AUT general secretary Sally Hunt told delegates: "We have fought off attempts to increase the number of increments and attack career earnings - and we have the opportunity to make significant gains for members in the short-term if we work together to make sure the deal is implemented properly."

The AUT rejected the employers' original offer in July and has been staging industrial action for the last four and a half weeks.

Under the application acceptable to the AUT, staff at the top of the grade structure would receive lower increases, while those at the bottom of the grades would receive a higher increase.

That means potential increases over two years of between 8.7% and 24.7%.